United States and Iranian negotiators in Muscat reached a sixty-day memorandum of understanding on Thursday that would convert the late-April ceasefire into a structured framework agreement, open a parallel nuclear track, and begin a phased restoration of commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, according to two officials briefed on the text. The document still requires President Donald Trump's signature, and the president told reporters outside the Oval Office that he was "not satisfied" with the language Tehran had insisted on for uranium enrichment rights.
The memorandum was first reported by Axios on Thursday afternoon and subsequently confirmed by US officials to Fox News and Reuters. Iran's parliament national security committee chair Ebrahim Azizi separately briefed the chamber in closed session that an "interim agreement on principles" had been reached and that a delegation would return to Tehran for consultation before any signing. Senior Omani mediators told reporters in Muscat that the negotiating teams would stand down for forty-eight hours.
Under the framework, the cessation of hostilities that has held since late April would be extended for sixty days, during which a second-track negotiation on Iran's uranium stockpile would begin under International Atomic Energy Agency observation. The IAEA placed Iran's remaining sixty-per-cent-enriched uranium at 440.9 kilograms in its most recent quarterly report. A senior US official said the framework contemplated a gradual reduction of that stockpile in exchange for incremental sanctions relief on civilian aviation and medical imports.
Trump's public hedging contrasted with the more optimistic read out of Muscat. Asked on the White House South Lawn whether he would sign the document, the president said only that the Iranian draft "isn't there yet" and added that "Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon." He also reiterated his position that the United States would resume strikes if Iran were to disrupt Hormuz traffic again, language US carrier groups in the Gulf of Oman have been operating under since the late February campaign began.
The Strait of Hormuz provisions are the framework's most operationally consequential. Tanker tracking firm Vortexa reported earlier in the week that transits had recovered to twelve VLCC-equivalent loads per day from the March trough of near-zero, against a pre-war baseline of roughly twenty-eight. A senior Iranian official told state television that Tehran would restore traffic to pre-war levels within a month of the memorandum being signed. Saudi and Emirati exports have already largely normalised; the bottleneck remains insurance market reluctance to underwrite Iranian and Iraqi cargoes.
Wednesday's US strikes on Iranian boats laying mines in the strait, which Tehran condemned as "bad faith and unreliability," have not so far derailed the talks, US officials said. The Pentagon described the action as defensive, and CENTCOM said it had destroyed several unmanned aerial vehicles approaching US warships in the Gulf of Oman late on Wednesday. Kuwait separately intercepted a ballistic missile attributed to Iran-aligned forces in southern Iraq in the early hours of Thursday, the Kuwaiti defence ministry confirmed.
Iran's lead negotiator, deputy foreign minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi, told Iranian state television after the Muscat session that the parties had agreed on "the great majority" of the language but that two items were still outstanding: the precise framing of Iran's right to civilian nuclear enrichment and the speed of the Hormuz reopening. He said his team would consult Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei before returning to Muscat, and that Tehran considered the question of war-ending arrangements separable from the situation in southern Lebanon.
That Lebanon carve-out is itself politically delicate. Iranian negotiators have publicly insisted that any framework also address Israel's expanded campaign on Hezbollah south of the Litani River, and the Israeli Defense Forces on Thursday issued evacuation orders covering roughly fourteen per cent of Lebanese territory. US officials say privately that the Lebanon track will be parked outside the Iran framework, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated to reporters Thursday that Iranian-Lebanese strategic depth was "an issue for Iran and Israel," not for Washington.
Market reaction was mixed. Brent crude futures climbed to roughly $97 a barrel and WTI to above $91, both rebounding from Wednesday's six-per-cent slide on Iranian signals about restoring Hormuz traffic; traders read Trump's hedging as evidence the deal could yet collapse. Equities held records into the close on the calmer geopolitical backdrop, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both setting fresh peaks. Federal-funds futures continued to imply two more rate cuts before year-end.
The diplomatic clock is now the dominant variable. Mediators from Oman and Qatar have privately told both sides that the window for a workable memorandum closes around mid-June, when Israel is expected to escalate its Lebanon campaign and Iran's parliament returns from its summer recess. Trump told reporters he would "know either way by next week."